On occasion, children have been able to get behind a lowered Roman shade, pull a lift cord to form a loop and become entangled in the loop. If the lift cord is around the child's neck and the child falls, the cord could act as a noose and strangle the child. Children have also become entangled within lift cords of venetian blinds. Reports of such incidents have prompted at least one major retailer to issue a recall of one product line of Roman shades and the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has issued a warning about the danger of child entanglement with cords of window coverings. In addition the CPSC has issued guidelines, rules and proposed rules that require window covering manufacturers to make shades with inaccessible cords or to construct the window covering product in a manner so that a child cannot form a loop in a cord which is large enough, greater than 8 inches in diameter, for a child's head to fit through the loop.
The art has developed various types of child safety devices that are intended to prevent deaths of children who become entangled in lift cords. For instance, U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,318,251, 7,261,138, 7,225,850, 7,117,918, 7,086,446, 7,000,672, 6,948,546, 6,918,425, 6,860,312, 6,637,493, 6,484,787, 6,431,248, 5,630,458, 5,533,559 and 4,909,298 and U.S. Patent Application Publication Nos. 2008/0110581, 2007/0023149 and 2006/0144526 disclose child safety devices for blinds. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,495,883 and 5,613,540 discloses cord shrouds used on the front of a blind. Child safety devices may be configured to keep the lift cords taut so that the cords cannot be pulled away from the window covering material and form a noose or release the cord from the shade when a child becomes entangled in the shade.
Other examples of child safety devices may be appreciated from my U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/185,629, which was filed on Jul. 19, 2011, and Ser. No. 13/214,515, which was filed on Aug. 22, 2011. These applications disclose shrouds that may be used in connection with window coverings such as Roman shades, pleated shades, Venetian blinds, and other window coverings with cords.
A new window covering is needed to replace or change conventional blind designs to help prevent the entanglement of children within exposed cords. Preferably, such a design prevents loops from being formed in the lift cords such that children cannot become entangled with lift cords while also covering or enclosing lift cords of the blind.